Hamid Karzai’s rival cries foul
Refuses to concede defeat
Kabul, October 17
Mr Hamid Karzai’s closest rival in Afghanistan’s landmark election refused to concede defeat today, saying a reversal of
early results and an investigation of fraud allegations could yet make him the country’s first popularly elected President.

Kashmiris’ free will must,
says Kasuri
Islamabad, October 17
Contending that any decision on Kashmir will not be imposed on the people of the state, Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmud Kasuri has said the issue will be resolved in line with the will of the
Kashmiris.

UK’s young career women putting motherhood on ice
Growing numbers of British women are trying to reconcile the conflicting demands of motherhood and professional life by turning to the controversial technology of egg freezing, allowing them to start a family long after their biological clock has stopped ticking.

David Mitchell front-runner for Booker
London, October 17
David Mitchell, a shop assistant-turned author, has emerged as the front-runner for this year’s Booker Prize, with his novel ‘Cloud Atlas’, described as a masterpiece in the literary circles.

Bail for Nankana Sahib
vandals
Islamabad, October 17
Lahore’s High Court has granted bail to Nankana Bar executives, senior lawyers and a cleric who were arrested for ransacking Nankana Sahib Gurdwara, and a college named after him.

Kabul, October 17
Mr Hamid Karzai’s closest rival in Afghanistan’s landmark election refused to concede defeat today, saying a reversal of early results and an investigation of fraud allegations could yet make him the country’s first popularly elected President.

Still, former Education Minister Yunus Qanooni also told the Associated Press that he was preparing for a spell in opposition as the country moved toward Western-style democracy.

Early returns from the October 9 election put Mr Karzai on course for a landslide in a vote supposed to cement Afghanistan’s post-Taliban stabilisation.

But the US-backed incumbent’s 15 opponents have complained of cheating to a panel of foreign experts set up to head off their threat to boycott the results.

In an interview, Mr Qanooni said “the figures will change’’ in his favour as more votes were counted. Election officials have also cautioned against calling the vote too soon.

Still, few independent observers believe that Mr Qanooni, member of the ethnic Tajik minority, could command a majority in a country deeply fractured by years of tribal and ethnic warfare.

Mr Karzai enjoys strong support among the country’s traditional rulers, the Pashtuns, as well as the international community.

Of 344,000 votes tallied by yesterday evening, Mr Karzai, the US-backed favourite installed as a transitional President by a tribal council after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, had captured 71 per cent.
— AP

Islamabad, October 17
Contending that any decision on Kashmir will not be imposed on the people of the state, Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmud Kasuri has said the issue will be resolved in line with the will of the Kashmiris.

Besides Indian and Pakistan participation, the involvement of the Kashmiri leadership in the dialogue process for peacefully settling the issue is imperative, Mr Kasuri was quoted as saying by the official media here.

He reiterated Pakistan's stand that the proposed Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service should be run without passport and visa —
PTI

London, October 17
The US-led war in Iraq hasn’t made the world any safer, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a British TV interview broadcast today.
“I cannot not say the world is safer when you consider the violence around us, when you look around you and see the terrorist attacks around the world and you see what is going on in Iraq,’’ Mr Annan told the ITV network, according to excerpts released ahead of the broadcast.

“I cannot say the world is safer. We have a lot of work to do as an international community to try and make the world safer,’’ he added.

Mr Annan has previously described the US-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein as “illegal” because Washington and its coalition partners never got the UN Security Council backing for the invasion.

He told ITV that Iraq was “on track’’ to hold elections at the end of January, but warned that he would speak out if he was not satisfied with the way they were conducted.

“If that sort of judgment or any decision which is made which we think detracts from the credibiliy and viability of the elections, we will be duty bound to say so,’’ he added.

Mr Annan also dismissed any suggestion that France, Russia and China had been prepared to ease sanctions on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in return for oil contracts.

Iraq tried to manipulate foreign governments by awarding contracts — and bribes — to foreign companies and political figures in countries that showed support for ending sanctions, in particular Russia, France and China, the final report by the US-led Iraq Survey Group said earlier this month. — AP

Growing numbers of British women are trying to reconcile the conflicting demands of motherhood and professional life by turning to the controversial technology of egg freezing, allowing them to start a family long after their biological clock has stopped ticking.

Clinics around the country report that up to a third of their patients are now citing lifestyle, rather than medical reasons, for wanting to undergo the procedure, which involves extracting eggs from the ovaries and freezing them in liquid nitrogen until the woman is ready to conceive.

Until now, ovary cryo-preservation, the scientific name for egg freezing, has been used largely for medical reasons, particularly to help female cancer sufferers who need to undergo chemotherapy and are concerned this may affect their fertility.

But, increasingly, women are looking for ways to prolong their rise up the career ladder or the search for Mr Right. Taking time off to have children has been shown to have a damaging effect on professional women’s pay and prospects at work. Egg freezing allows older women to become mothers even after the menopause.

The trend is already well established in the US, where private clinics have set out to target single career women.

Around nine fertility treatment centres in Britain have carried out egg freezing since it first became available four years ago. Of these, nearly half say that between one-10th and one-third of their clients have banked their healthy eggs in ice because they are waiting for Mr Right.

The latest figures from Birmingham-based Midland Fertility Services, one of the largest IVF units in the UK, reveal that eight out of 26 egg freezings carried out between January 2002 and December 2003 were for lifestyle reasons.

A similar proportion is reported by the Care Clinic at Park Hospital in Nottingham as well as the London Fertility Centre, which last year treated two single women in their early 40s who had put motherhood on hold. London’s University College Hospital and the Assisted Reproduction and Gynaecology Centre, also in London, report that one out of every 10 procedures last year were carried out on single women freezing their eggs as an insurance policy.

Although egg freezing is a new technique, with only a few hundred British women having undergone the procedure, it offers hope for the Bridget Jones generation, which has put motherhood on hold only to realise that the chances of becoming pregnant naturally after 35 are very low.

The technology of egg freezing has been available in Britain for several years, but it was only in 2000 that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) first gave permission for clinics to thaw frozen eggs. There are now 20 British clinics licensed to harvest eggs from patients’ ovaries and freeze them for thawing and fertilising at a later date.

The first successful birth from egg freezing was in 2002, when a married woman gave birth to a baby boy after suffering from fertility problems.

Helen Perry was a patient at Midland Fertility Services Clinic, which is run by Dr Gillian Lockwood. Dr Lockwood says egg freezing is being used by busy women who want to delay motherhood.

“They know they are going to be too busy with education, travel, career, getting on the housing ladder so they won’t be thinking about starting a family until they are 35,” said Ms Lockwood, chairperson of the British Fertility Society Ethics Committee. She says critics have accused her staff of “tinkering with nature”.

The technique does have an undetermined success rate. Some experts believe it could be as low as between 1 and 10 per cent and that the procedure should not be actively promoted.

London, October 17
David Mitchell, a shop assistant-turned author, has emerged as the front-runner for this year’s Booker Prize, with his novel ‘Cloud Atlas’, described as a masterpiece in the literary circles.

According to bookmaker William Hill, Mitchell has emerged as the hot favourite for the award at odds of 5-4.

The winner of the £50,000 prize will be announced on Tuesday.

“Cloud Atlas”, a series of interconnected tales in different genres, faces competition from two well-known figures in the literary circle.

Alan Hollinghurst’s “The Line of Beauty”, depicting Britain in the Thatcher years, is listed at 5-2. —
PTI

Islamabad, October 17
Lahore’s High Court has granted bail to Nankana Bar executives, senior lawyers and a cleric who were arrested for ransacking Nankana Sahib Gurdwara, and a college named after him.

They had been lodged in a Sheikhupura district jail under Pakistan’s Maintenance of Public Order 3 law for the past 20 days.

The alleged vandals are also facing charges of making inflammatory speeches against the government.

Among those granted bail yesterday included Bar president Rana Ali Asghar, general secretary Anwar Zahid, former member of the Provincial Assembly Chaudhry Barkat Ali Ghayoor, former Bar president Rai Amin Bhatti, and Tehreek-e-Khatm-e-Nabuwat leader Abdul Hameed Rehmani, the Daily Times said today. —
UNI

BRIEFLY

1 held for using
kids as guinea pigs
KUALA LUMPUR: A practitioner of traditional medicine in Malaysia was arrested for allegedly using kidnapped children as human guinea pigs while trying to find new cures, a newspaper reported on Sunday. The man was detained with four children. —
AP

Satellite smashes into house
BEIJING: A Chinese satellite smashed into a villager's house on its return to earth, destroying the dwelling but causing no injuries, state media reported on Sunday. The
capsule, accidentally landed on the building in south-western Sichuan province after an 18-day mission, the Youth Daily said. —
AFP

Birth defects
on rise in China
BEIJING: Birth defects have soared in China after the government made pre-marriage health check optional, the state media reported on Sunday. More than 6,00,000 babies are born in central China's Hunan province each year. —
PTI